Ogier’s Cooney moves to Charles Russell Speechlys’ Zurich office

David Cooney, an international private client specialist with Ogier’s Cayman Islands outpost for the past five years, has been named an international private client partner in the Zurich office of Charles Russell Speechlys, effective immediately.

Cooney’s appointment comes in the wake of the appointment of three Swiss partners last year, “and brings the total number of partners in [Charles Russell Speechlys’s] Swiss offices to six,” the firm said in a statement this week.

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Cooney, pictured, who had been admitted as a solicitor in England and Wales in 2003, as an attorney-at-law in the Cayman Islands in 2012 and as a solicitor in the British Virgin Islands in 2014, had joined Ogier in the Cayman Islands in 2012.

At Ogier, Cooney had headed the firm’s private client and trusts team for the Caribbean region, and according to his new employer, was once described by Chambers & Partners, the law firm and lawyer ranking entity, as “probably the best trust lawyer of his generation in the Cayman Islands”.

Charles Russell Speechlys is based in London but has a number of overseas offices, including, in addition to Zurich, Geneva, Luxembourg, Paris, Doha and Bahrain, which provide cross-border legal and tax advice to locals as well as expatriates.

It opened its Zurich office in 2011, when it was still known as Speechly Bircham. Speechly Bircham merged with Charles Russell, to form Charles Russell Speeclys, in 2014.

Charles Russell Speechlys managing partner James Carter said Cooney’s experience over the past five years, advising ultra-high net worth clients on a range of trust and private client matters out of the Cayman Islands, meant he would be bringing a “unique expertise” to the firm.